Energy and Climate: Challenges and Solutions

By Kim McDonald I December 6, 2004

A panel discussion today on global warming and the prospects of a hydrogen economy will kick off a new lecture series on the environment by the Division of Physical Sciences.

Today’s panel discussion, “Energy and Climate: Challenges and Solutions,” will take place from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the first floor auditorium of the Natural Sciences Building, located near the corner of La Jolla Shores Drive and Torrey Pines Road. Refreshments will be served before the event, which will be taped by UCSD-TV for later broadcast.

The featured speakers are: Joseph J. Romm, executive director of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions and author of The Hype About Hydrogen - Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate; and Frankin M. (Lynn) Orr, Jr. professor of petroleum engineering and project director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University. Mark Thiemens, dean of UCSD’s Division of Physical Sciences, and Dane Chapin, CEO of USAopoly in Carlsbad and the sponsor of lecture, will moderate the discussion.

Romm also will be signing copies of his latest book, The Hype About Hydrogen, before the panel discussion. An energy expert with over a decade of leadership experience on hydrogen and fuel cell technology and policy, he was the former Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. He is also an acclaimed author who has written and lectured widely on energy technology, environmental management, and competitiveness and is the author of several books on the subject. In addition to The Hype About Hydrogen, they include Cool Companies: How the Best Businesses Boost Profits, Productivity by Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Lean and Clean Management.

Orr, former dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford, utilizes science to develop innovative ways to produce sufficient energy to meet growing economies and demand. His specialization is in the field of enhanced oil recovery techniques, which uses chemical engineering to efficiently extract petroleum from known oil reserves. His research interests include prediction of performance of field-scale flooding, mathematics of multiphase, multi-component flow with equilibrium phase behavior, and thermodynamics of phase behavior. Click here for more event information.